The Most Overlooked Part of Customer Experience | Joe Macleod

Written By Joe Macleod

Most brands spend vast amounts of energy, time, and money perfecting customer onboarding—yet completely ignore the final offboarding impression. In this conversation on Simple Brand, Joe Macleod joins Matt Lyles to explain why designing the ending of a customer relationship is the single most overlooked lever for protecting brand equity and building lasting trust.

• The Onboarding/Offboarding Disconnect: Why the tech and consumer industries over-index on customer acquisition while leaving an unmanaged "End Gap" at the product exit.

• Dignified Exits vs. Hostile Friction: How dark patterns and forced retention tactics backfire on consumer psychology, damaging brand reputation and future re-acquisition opportunities.

• The Business ROI of Good Endings: How clear offboarding flows reduce support overhead, lower compliance risks, and convert departing customers into active brand advocates.

• Applying Endineering in CX: Practical steps for product managers, experience designers, and brand leaders to build offboarding touchpoints that align with modern consumer expectations and compliance standards.

Listen to Simple Brand with Matt Lyles
Joe Macleod

Joe Macleod is founder of the worlds first customer ending business. A veteran of product development industry with decades of experience across service, digital and product sectors.

Head of Endineering at AndEnd. TEDx Speaker. Wired says “An energetic Englishman, Macleod advises companies on how to game out their endgames. Every product faces a cycle of endings. It's important to plan for each of them. Not all companies do." Fast Company says “Joe Macleod wants brands to focus on what happens to products at the end of their life cycle—not just for the environment but for the entire consumer experience.”

He is author of the Ends book, that iFixIt called “the best book about consumer e-waste”. And the new book –Endineering, that people are saying “defines and maps out a whole new sub-discipline of study”. The DoLectures consider the Endineering book one of the best business books of 2022.

https://www.andend.co
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The End Gap: The overlooked space between product usage and disposal